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UK Government fails again

I wonder,Â sometimes, who comes up with these ideas.

Our beloved government think that in order to combat crime, especially terrorism, they will need all the ISPs in the country to keep details of every single email that anyone sends or receives on their services. If they do that then we’ll all be able to sleep snugly in our beds,Â safe in the knowledge that our enemies will be unable to communicate with each other.

From March all internet service providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year.

Human rights group Liberty says it is worried what will happen next.

The Home Office insists the data, which does not include e-mails’ content, is vital for crime and terror inquiries.

Great.Â So, no email content but they still want to keep more of our private data available for their perusal.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said ISPs already kept the information on a voluntary basis.

“The thing we have to worry about is what happens next because the government is already mooting plans not just to leave this stuff with the providers but to create a central government database where they hold all the information.

“I’m afraid we just don’t trust any government or any organisation to keep that much very sensitive information about us all and to keep it safe.”

Exactly. Our incompetent government, and the similarly incompetent “security” firms that they employ, just can’t keep our private data private when they have it. Why should we trust them with this information?

In fact, why do they think that this’ll help at all? They may catch the odd criminal who’s too stupid to keep their plans to themselves but will it catch any terrorists? I doubt it.Â It’s too easy to communicate privately and securely over the internet for this scheme to be of any use.